Minnie's Match
by Old Emerald Eye
Summary: The eight ladies of Hogwarts that Minerva McGonagall loves. (Three sentence fics.)
1. Pomona Sprout

There is something to be said for summers at Hogwarts, when its slow and quiet and the heat of the sun turns the greenhouses tropical.

Even without students to teach and correct and save from the unexpected devils snare/venomous tentacular cross that she's thinking of writing a paper about for the Greenthumb Quarterly, Pomona always has something that needs doing. It's a good thing Minerva has had several decades as a cat to learn essential social activities like existing in the same room while luxuriating in a patch of sunshine.


	2. Aurora Sinistra

Luna's the only one at the school that knows, because she's the only one the Teacroft Toflies know will listen to the secrets they glean from the stars.

The House Elves no doubt have more than an inkling between themselves, with all the morning teas for two that they've put together, but they don't pry. Luna surprises the two of them with an anniversary present, fluffy furred cats chasing multi-hued stars across the wrapping paper, and skips off to class while they're recovering from their shock.


	3. Poppy Pomfrey

Poppy Pomfrey is a medwitch, a healer with over three decades experience at a school that specialises in magical mayhem. She has never once had – never once expected to have – staff directly responsible for a patient landing in her hospital wing.  
Poppy is a healer, and her oath was sworn to heal and never to harm, but were she otherwise she would repay each and every one of those stunners trifold at brightest noon.


	4. Wilhelmina Grubbly-Plank

Knowing your prey is an essential part of successfully catching it, and Minerva McGonagall is not one to let herself be caught by chance.

Minerva is many things, but fortunately for Wilhelmina, she is also a cat, and she has the curiosity to go with it, as skittish and battle shy as it may be.

Carefully layered hints of the potential, theoretical applications of some materials she works with, leads to some casual, informal collaboration and bites to eat with absolutely no significance becomes frequent meals and brainstorm sessions becomes interesting bits of trivia shared during their weekly dates in the kitchens and trips to hidden glens and coves every fortnight, and almost before she knows it Minerva is as caught by her as Wilhelmina is of Minerva.


	5. Charity Burbage

Between the two of them, three subjects, hundreds of students per year, thousands of assignments and otherwise indispensable pieces of administrative riffraff that keep the castle standing and the world in a spin, there is never quite enough time to make do with.

The magic of it is they make time, stretching out scraps like Honeydukes finest taffy, sharing lunches in their quarters and patrols after midnight before curling together until they can't tell where one arm ends and another begins, most of the time – Minerva has elbows that were unsuccessfully claimed, by no less than the entirety of Slytherin's team, and a good few that had practice with her besides, as weapons under the Hogwarts' Inter-House Quidditch code, during her days as Griffindor's lead Chaser – before waking with the dawn to start afresh once more.

Even so, they make a habit, the second week of summer, when suddenly they have an ocean of unclaimed hours stretching on until September first like an ocean of possibilities, of stepping away from it all and shacking up in a little muggle town by the sea – alternating between Minerva's native Scots hillsides and a delightful find of Charity's just off the beach somewhere remote and sunsoaked – and glorifying in the effort of doing absolutely nothing.


	6. Septima Vector

Minerva has been teaching at Hogwarts for over a decade before Septima Vector arrives to take the Arithmancy post, and has more than a few years on her besides, but for those of a magical bent the years are less of a barrier than they are to muggles, especially for two who are well settled in their careers.

Septima is almost scarily hypercompetent at everything she does, switching from the new professor to the strict professor who accepts only the best for and from her students within the first week of classes, from the newest in the staffroom to capable college long before the first staff meeting, and from Minerva's acquaintance to companion precisely on her own schedule.

One of the reasons Minerva McGonagall, Deputy Headmistress, recommended hiring Septima was her tendency to hold to precision above all else; in her teaching – essential for destructive young magicals, given the potential product of mismanaged Arithmancy - in her work, and especially in her choice of partner, so once Minerva twigs to that fact she has no doubt a simple inquiry would net her the exact span of their first kiss, if she cared to ask.


	7. Irma Pince

Their partnership is not without its advantages – Irma never has to worry about escaped pet mice, or cuts to the library's budget each year, not like her predecessor who had to fight each and every year to keep the collection of texts the best in Europe, and Minerva's research is a breeze, when they aren't distracting each other like the schoolgirls under their care.

Holidays are very much easier too, when all it takes is a banana, two pointy hats and a bit of rummaging between the shelves to get away from the world.

Sometimes, when they can't get away and it's all Minerva can do not hold onto a scream, Irma's there with a cardboard box and a pinch of catnip to take enough of an edge off the day that it doesn't quite leave her wife headless.


	8. Rolanda Hooch

Flying, the means and methods thereof.

* * *

Flying, the doing and competing and arguing various methods thereof, is as much part of their relationship as sneaking into the kitchens afterhours at the end of their weekly Thursday night patrol around the sixth, fifth and second floors.

Rolanda is more geared towards the eagle in the sky view, with a goal and developing habit of refereeing Hogwarts' Quidditch matches, official and otherwise, while Minerva makes up the other side of their arguments as a beater well known for finding and exploiting every ill defined and unguarded edge she can get close enough to swing a bat at.

Pinned against walls and hidden in shadowy enclaves off the beaten path, with a silencing charm in place by nothing more than sheer bloody-minded force of habit, is another way for the two of them to fly, as if not more enjoyable than the more traditionally known variant.


End file.
